Notes 15 - Radon Transform

Mathematical Development
Background
The Radon transform is a mathematical procedure that is important to understand when dealing with computed tomography (CT). It relates
projection data to cross-sectional profiles. In practice, the data collected from a CT scanner consists of projections and thus the computation of
the Radon transform is rarely needed since the data available comes in that form. In this context, one has many projections and one is looking
to reconstruct the density profile f(x,y) that caused the projections; this is the inverse Radon transform problem. However, in order to understand how one can reconstruct a cross-section from projections, I present here both the Radon transform and its inverse. I will then discuss in
more detail practical techniques available to reconstruct tomographic sections that bypass some of the difficulties of the Radon transform.
The Radon transform is a mathematical way to define a projection of a two-dimensional function f(x,y) along a predefined direction. The
illustration below may make this more understandable.

Figure 1. Geometry of the Radon transform. Left panel: multiple projections from a single image. Right panel, definition of the elements in the Radon transform.

In the figure above a 2D function f(x,y) shown as a dark square with a white circular object is projected onto a line (one of the views) by
integrating it along a direction perpendicular to the line. This results in a 1D profile R with parameters (a,b) or (,) which define the orientation of the line.
In figure 2 below, is illustrated a single projection of a rotated square which is integrated along vertical lines. This is one of many possible
projections.

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

Figure 2. Single projection of a square along the vertical direction onto the lower graph. The Radon transform consists of many such projections at many different angles of
rotation.

Figure 3. Same square image as in figure 2, with a complete sinogram of its Radon transform. To interpret the sinogram (a representation of all the projections) it is useful to
visualize the projection of the square onto the horizontal axis as it is rotated. The Horizontal axis of the sinogram is the rotation angle, the vertical is the amplitude of the
profile. The Radon transform in this case was computed at 1 intervals from 0 to 179. Leftmost in the sinogram is a boxcar profile, flat on the top and with steep slopes on
both sides corresponding to integrating along the vertical lines when the square is not rotated. At 45 a white peak forms the apex of a triangle whose slope is evidenced by a
gradual change from white to yellow to orange to red then to black. This corresponds to the square with corners up/down and left/right. At 90 the profile is identical to that at
0 and 180. Similarly at 135 the profile is the same as that of 45 all these rotations being equivalent.

Radon Transform
If one uses the slope intercept form of the line equation, one can express the radon transform as follows:

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

R(a, b)[ f(x, y)] =

f(x, b + ax) x

(0.1)

Alternatively one can use the Dirac-delta (or impulse) function to define the path of integration in terms of the variables x and y:

R(a, b)[ f(x, y)] =

f(x, y) [y - (ax + b)] x y U(a, b)

(0.2)

- -

One can also express the radon transform using the normal form of the line equation shown in figure 1:

R(, )[ f(x, y)] =

f(x, y) ( - x cos() - y sin() x y U(, )

(0.3)

- -

Inverse Radon Transform

The computation of the inverse Radon transform is not straightforward and more than one approach are available that attempt to circumvent
some of the difficulties involved.
If one used the formulation in eq 0.1 or 0.2, the procedure for computing the inverse Radon transform is:
f(x, y) =

H[U(a, y - a x)] a

- y

(0.4)

where H[] represents the Hilbert transform of the Radon transform:

H[ f(x)] = g(y) =

PV

H-1 [g(y)] = f(x) =

f(x)

- x

PV

-y

g(y)

- y

-x

(0.5)

(0.6)

and PV represents the computation of the principal value of the integral, a technique used to handle improper integrals:
b

PV f(x) x = lim+
0
a

c-
a

f(x) x +

f(x) x, where a c b

(0.7)

c+

One can get a sense that computing the inverse Radon transform is not a trivial operation and that more often than not one will be faced with
having to approximate improper integrals.
Alternatively, if one used the formulation of eq. 0.3 then one can proceed as follow:

f(x, y) =
0

R[ f(, )] W(, , x, y)

(0.8)

with one of many possible choices proposed for W(, , x, y) being:

W(, , x, y) = h(x cos() + y sin() - ) = F-1 [57]

(0.9)

(The last term F-1 [57] will be explained in the next section, for now accept it as one of many ways to filter the back projection in the frequency
domain).
Another approach that can be used is:
f(x, y) =

lim
c0
0

R[ f( + x cos() + y sin())] Gc ()

(0.10)

where
1
c2

Gc () =

1
c2

for 57 c
1-

1
1-

for 57 > c

(0.11)

c2
2

Discussion and Conclusion

The mathematical development presented above is intended to convey the fact that one rarely uses an analytic approach to invert the Radon
transform in practice, largely because of the nature of the integrals involved in the process. However, the study of the Radon transform and its
inverse have led to some findings that lend themselves to practical solutions to reconstructing

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

Practical Methods of Solution

Inverse Radon reconstruction by Simple Back Projection
Simple back projection is intuitively very easy to understand. One can take each 1D profile and extrude it along the line of integration to
produce a 2D image. The individual extruded profiles can be added to gradually produce an approximation of the orignal image. This method
is illustrated in figure 4 below.

Figure 4. Simple back projection illustrated for 36 projections combined. Each projection from the Radon transform is used to create an image by sweeping it in the direction
of integration. This can be seen in the 1st top left frame where a single projection is used to create an image with two stripes. Then, additional projections are added,
correctly oriented, to produce the final image in the lower left corner which looks like the original two squares.

It can be seen that while the final image in the 2nd panel (lower right) resembles two squares, they are blurred. One can see that this approach
is only an approximation. The problem is that the stripes make an assumption of uniform pixel values along the lines of integration when
producing the Radon transform, which is simply no true. This results in the blurred version of the original image.

The Fourier Slice Theorem

Before we can proceed to the Filtered Back Projection, we need to introduce a topic that will help understand why it works. This is a theorem
known as the Fourier Slice Theorem.
Mathematically one can demonstrate it as follows:
Let g(x) be a projection of a 2D function f(x,y) along the x axis:

g(x) =

f(x, y) y

(0.12)

Taking the Fourier transform of f(x,y):

F(u, v) =

f(x, y) e-2 i(x u+y v) x y

(0.13)

- -

Now if we take a cross section of that 2D Fourier transform where v=0:

C(u) = F(u, 0) =

f(x, y) e-2 i(x u) x y

(0.14)

- -

f(x, y) y e-2 i(x u) x

(0.15)

g(x) e-2 i(x u) x

(0.16)

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

which is the 1D Fourier transform of the projection g(x). It is interesting to note that the same result could be obtained with any rotation angle.
To convince yourself of that, you may either do the math, or think of rotating f(x,y) doing the same demonstration and then rotating back...
Visually, the relation between the 2D FT and the 1D FT of multiple projections can be viewed in figure 5 below.

Figure 5. The Fourier transform of a projection from the space domain image corresponds to one cross section through the center of the 2 D Fourier transform. By adding
many such 1 D FTs of projections at different angles, it is possible to reconstruct the full FT of the 2 D object.

This theorem makes it possible (as one possible approach) to compute the tomographic slice from projections. The process would be as follows:
a) Collect many projections
b) Compute the 1D-FT for every projection
c) Reconstruct the 2D-FT from all the 1D-FTs by rotating them appropriately and assigning pixel values in the FT image.
d) When the full 2D-FT is obtained, proceed to take the inverse FT to produce the image.
NOTE. One difficulty with this approach is that of having enough projections to be able to correctly interpolate values in the outer region of
the FT image.
It can be noted in passing that the density of information in the center of the reconstructed image is very large while it is much less in the
periphery.

Inverse Radon reconstruction by Filtered Back Projection

We saw in the previous discussion that a lot of data is available for the center of the frequency domain image and little in the periphery. This
can be used to improve the performance of the back projection technique by filtering it in a certain way. Because of the high data density in the
center of the 2D-FT image and low data density in the outer regions, we want to weigh it differently depending on the radial distance from the
center. This is known as a ramp filter, H()=||.

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

Figure 6. Ramp filter used on the 1D projections of the Radon transform for the Filtered Back Projection technique.

Figure 7. Effect of applying the 1D Ramp filter to each column of the Radon transform: Peaks are de-emphasized, negative values are present near sharp edges.

The Filtered Back Projection technique consists of:

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

a) Collect many projections

b) Apply 1D ramp filter to the projections.
c) proceed as in the simple back projection.

Figure 8 shows the results of using a filtered back projection with a ramp filter.
Figure 8. Filtered back projection with a ramp filter.

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

Figure 9. Comparison between simple and filtered back projection techniques.

In the figure above, we can see the original image (upper left), the simple back projection (upper middle) and the filtered back projection (upper
right). In the row of graphs below I show a cross section of the images through the small square (blue) and through the large square (red).
From one can see how the simple back projection distorts sharp edges and also the relative amplitudes of features, while the filtered back
projection resembles the original image much better (to a scaling factor).

Notes_15_Radon_Transform.nb

Figure 10. Artifacts resulting from too few projections. Upper left: Original Image. Upper Right: reconstruction with 18 projections at 10 increments. Lower left: reconstruction with 36 projections at 5 increments. Lower left: 180 projections at 1 increments. These reconstructions were computed using the filtered back projection in Matlab.

The number of projections used in the reconstruction of tomographic images will have an effect on the quality of the results. This is demonstrated in figure 10.